Sri Chinmoy

We are inspired to offer these free meditation classes by the vision of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007), who devoted his life to making meditation as widely known and practiced as possible. Sri Chinmoy says, “Meditation is everybody’s birthright. In meditation we establish our oneness with the entire world and our whole being is inundated with peace.”

Sri Chinmoy was born in 1931 in the village of Shakpura, Chittagong, in the easternmost part of India (now Bangladesh). All seven brothers and sisters in the family chose a spiritual life and became residents of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in South India. Chinmoy Kumar Ghose was the youngest child. After the death of both his parents, he joined this spiritual community at the age of twelve.

During the next twenty years he spent many hours of each day and night in meditation and had profound inner experiences, which deepened and widened as he continued his inner journey. He also led an active outer life writing poetry, essays and music, studying, working and excelling in sports. In 1964 he came to New York to begin his service of teaching and inspiring spiritual seekers worldwide.

Sri Chinmoy has said, “Each spiritual seeker has an inner hunger. This hunger is for the Unlimited, for Infinity itself.” The spiritual hunger within us is our aspiration – the inner cry or longing for a higher reality, mounting up like a flame in our hearts. Meditation and service to the world are the expression of our aspiration. Living in the heart, we find our own true satisfaction and our oneness with others.

With aspiration we continually transcend ourselves “from light, to more light, abundant light, to infinite light.” It is the aspiration within each person that creates progress in all areas of human life – religion, science, the arts, culture, public life and sports.

Sri Chinmoy entered his Mahasamadhi, or final union with the Supreme, on October 11, 2007, leaving his physical body at the age of seventy-six.